


a momentary taste of freedom

by besselfcn



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Choking, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, MAG104, Mild Gore, Necrophilia, Rape/Non-con Elements, loss of consciousness, the necrophilia is just imagined
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:43:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26112844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Time slows down, when you’re being throttled to death.-An alternate ending to 104 - Sneak Preview.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Tim Stoker
Comments: 16
Kudos: 47





	a momentary taste of freedom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DryDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DryDreams/gifts).



> > listens to MAG104  
> > instantly opens a google doc

Elias had sounded bored, when he started. 

When he thinks about it later — when he lets himself think about it later, when he doesn’t press it down under heaps of alcohol and maybe an upper or two that he got from Jeanette up in filing, when he just needs to run it over and over and over again in his mind to make sure it really happened — that’s the thing that sickens him the most. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t even anger. It was just… exasperation.

In one moment Tim was telling him _how about you kill me?_ and in the next he was in the air, feet off the ground, then _bam_ cheek to the desk, _bam_ hand on the nape of his neck, _bam_ the heady terror rising in him on instinct before his mind caught up to the reality of it. Little fissions in his mind, seeping in where it was already broken.

“I don’t want to kill you, Tim,” Elias says. “But I know you’ve been having a rough time of things lately—” oh, good _god_ , is he taking off his _belt?_ “— and think perhaps a momentary taste of freedom might set your mind at ease.”

“Don’t you fucking _touch_ —” is all Tim can get out before the belt is looped around his neck and his airway is clamped shut with a horrid wheeze. 

Time slows down, when you’re being throttled to death. Tim thought that was just something people said, just flavor text for their fucking statements, but it’s true — time bends painfully slowly around him here, with Elias pulling his belt tighter and tighter against Tim’s throat. He has the time for a half dozen different thoughts, all overlapping at once, in the space where only one thought should rightfully be. _This hurts_ , first, and then, _I need air,_ and _where’s Martin_ , and _am I being murdered?_ and things that aren’t thoughts, exactly, but images: eyes pressing into the back of his neck, magnetic tape spinning in a clear plastic case, fragments of Jurgen Leitner’s skull embedded in the pulp of his brain matter. 

Elias is hard. 

He doesn’t know when that happened, but he can feel it against the back of his thigh. It’s the only other thing he can feel. A belt around his neck, and Elias’s cock pressed against him. For a wild moment Tim thinks he’s about to be raped, which would spike panic in his heart if he weren’t already stretched to breaking, but hes… Elias isn’t moving. He isn’t undressing himself, or Tim; he isn’t even touching Tim, save for the weight of him that presses him down and the leather around his neck. 

_He doesn’t need to_ , Tim thinks. He doesn’t know what the fuck that means. But he’s dying, here, so he can’t be held accountable for nonsense. 

But now he notices — talking. Elias is actually _talking_ , as if Tim can hear him over the roar in his ears, as if his adrenaline-drowned brain could parse any fucking thing right now other even if it wanted to. 

He doesn’t know who puts the image in his head. Whether it’s his or Elias’s. Whether anything in his head anymore is, or has ever been, _him_ or _Elias._ But he sees himself lying dead across Martin’s desk, eyes open. And Elias’s cock moving in his corpse, his face still placid and bored.

Distantly Tim realizes the slamming sound he’s been hearing is his own fists beating against the desk, the involuntary muscle spasms of a man fighting for life. He realizes it because they fade out as his arms go numb. He realizes because he thinks, isn’t anyone else listening? Isn’t anyone else there? 

Then he stops thinking at all, and the world goes white hot and empty. 

Blissfully, finally empty.

  
  
  
  


He gasps. 

Not on purpose. He gasps the same way he beats his heart; involuntary, unthinking. Air pours into his lungs, crisp and sharp and _angry_ , slicing all the way down, and he realizes he’s on the floor, on his knees, arms and legs throbbing numb and all he can do is choke and breathe and choke again. 

He blinks. His eyes feel hot; he’s sure if he looks in the mirror there will be burst blood vessels there, angry and red. The rest of him feels utterly cold.

Tim manages to sit up.

Elias is sitting in Martin’s chair, not even _trying_ to hide the arousal evident in the blown pupils of his eyes or the dark spot on his slacks. “Was it a restful sleep, Tim?” 

Tim says, “Fuck you, you motherfucking cocksucker piece of filth,” except that he doesn’t; all that comes out is _Fff—_ and a wheeze, and then he’s coughing again, brutally.

Elias looks at his watch. Tim realizes, with an impossible flash of anger, that he’s got his belt back on. “Sixteen seconds,” he says. “I should think that will refresh your mind, don’t you?”

He stands. Tim wants the man dead. He has never wanted anything like he wants this now. 

“Take your time getting back to work,” Elias tells him, and he leaves. 

Tim doesn’t know how long he lays there on the floor. He wonders, vaguely, where Martin’s gone — thinks probably Elias told him not to come back. Thinks probably Martin didn’t ask questions why. 

He never asks questions, Martin. Stupid fucker.

(Then again, Martin’s not been choked into unconsciousness in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, so. Who’s Tim to judge.)

After an eternity, Tim staggers to his knees, and then drags himself into one of the chairs. That whirring noise — of course it’s the tape recorder running. What else would it be in this fucking hell hole. 

He thinks about leaving it. His entire _statement_ , unedited, for Jon to listen to when he returns. The bitterness bubbles up in him from a place he’s only recently realized he’s capable of. _You want to Watch, do you, Archivist? Then don’t look away._

But there is the Archivist, and there is Jon, and he thinks one of these days, maybe, _maybe_ , he’d like to care about Jon again. 

So he rewinds the tape to before Elias walked in, and hits record again. 

He lets his ragged, dampened breathing scratch itself over the tape until the rotaries _click-click-click_ at the end of the spool. 


End file.
